Mass injury and death were accepted as a price worth paying for this convenience and relative speed of car travel.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The second big step forward for car dominance came in the 1960s. Increased affluence and mass production made cars affordable for far more people and they became a consumer object. In response, urban planners decided that towns and cities had to be remade. Inner ring-roads, multi-storey car parks, petrol stations were all built to service car drivers. Car ownership represented freedom of travel and cities were planned to accommodate this.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
These planning decisions of 60 years ago created the car-dominated environments we live in today. Cities became places in which cars were \u2018owners\u2019 \u2013 as urban planner Donald Appleyard described it. Appleyard was the man who came up with the idea of \u2018liveable streets\u2019. He conducted research which showed the negative social impact of high levels of motor traffic on neighbourhoods.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
![\"Hythe](\"https:\/\/www.cyclox.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/03\/Traffic_Bill-DAlessandro-1024x683.jpg\")
<\/figure>Cars have come to dominate how urban space is used.<\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n
Cities owned by cars<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
What exactly does it mean to say we created cities owned by cars? First, it means that cars came to dominate how urban space is used. A great deal of land in the city was allocated to accommodating cars and their needs (roads, car parks, garages). At the same time car owners came to believe they had \u2018rights\u2019 which took priority over those of other people in the city. The rights of drivers were put before those of pedestrians, or cyclists, or residents of urban streets and neighbourhoods, and this stuck.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Second, it means that the rules of using public spaces \u2013 rules about speed of travel, who gives way on the road, who has priority of access \u2013 were set in favour of the car.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And third, it means that both entry into, and movement across, large swathes of city space, were restricted to cars. Streets came to be seen and used as distinct legal and social spaces, somehow cut off from the social organisation and life of the city.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The feel, atmosphere and rhythm of cities was established by and for the private car, both when it was moving, and when \u2013 which is 96% of the time \u2013 it was parked. It may be worse in, for example, US and Australian cities, where walking or cycling on many roads is impossible, but Oxford too is a city where the motor vehicle owns the streets.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
My next blog will look at the way in which this ownership by cars impacts our daily lives.<\/p>\n\n\n\n